Old Saxon grammar

Strong verbs

Strong verbs use the Germanic form of conjugation known as ablaut. In this form of conjugation, the stem of the word changes to indicate the tense. Verbs like this persist in modern English; for example sing, sang, sung is a strong verb, as is swim, swam, swum and choose, chose, chosen. The root portion of the word changes rather than its ending. In Old English, there were seven major classes of a strong verb; each class has its own pattern of stem changes. Learning these is often a challenge for students of the language, though English speakers may see connections between the old verb classes and their modern forms.

The classes had the following distinguishing features to their infinitive stems:

1. ī + one consonant.
2. io or ū + one consonant.
3. e or i + two consonants.
4. e + 1 consonant (usually l or r, plus the verb brekan 'to break').
5. e + 1 consonant (usually a stop or a fricative).
6. a + 1 consonant.
7. Other than the above. Always a heavy root syllable (either a long vowel or short + two consonants), almost always a non-umlauted vowel – e.g. ō, ā, ē, a. Infinitive is distinguishable from class 1 weak verbs by non-umlauted root vowel; from class 1 weak verbs by lack of suffix -ian and from class 2 weak verbs by lack of suffix -on. First and second preterite have identical stems, usually in io (occ. ē), and the infinitive and the past participle also have the same stem.

The first preterite stem is used in the preterite, for the first- and third-person singular. The second preterite stem is used for second-person singular, and all persons in the plural (as well as the preterite subjunctive). Strong verbs also exhibit i-mutation of the stem in the second- and third-person singular in the present tense, and sometimes in the first person as well (especially class II, III, IV and V verbs).

Regular strong verbs were all conjugated roughly the same, with the main differences being in the stem vowel. Thus stelan 'to steal' represents the strong verb conjugation paradigm.

Weak verbs

The past and past-participle forms of weak verbs are formed with a (t or d) added to the end of the stem. Some modern English examples of this are love, loved or look, looked.

Originally, the weak ending was used to form the preterite of informal, noun-derived verbs such as often emerge in conversation and which have no established system of stem-change. By nature, these verbs were almost always transitive, and even today, most weak verbs are transitive verbs formed in the same way. The same process is found in Old English, and throughout the history of the English language. As English came into contact with non-Germanic languages, it invariably borrowed useful verbs which lacked established stem-change patterns. Rather than inventing and standardizing new classes or learning foreign conjugations, English speakers simply applied the weak ending to the foreign bases. The same process also happened with Dutch, German and occurs in modern Germanic languages.

There are three major classes of weak verbs in Old Saxon. The two first classes are recognizable as all their infinitives have the same ending -ian (1st class) and -on/-oian (2nd class). There is also a third class explained below, also ending with -ian.

Class-one verbs with short roots exhibit gemination of the final stem consonant in certain forms. Geminated ⟨f⟩ appears as ⟨bb⟩, and that of ⟨g⟩ appears as ⟨gg⟩.

Class-two verbs are recognizable in having an o-theme throughout the whole conjugation.

The following table shows the conjugation of three verbs: swebbian, "to put to sleep" is a class-one verb exhibiting gemination and an epenthetic vowel; dēlian "to share, deal" is a class-one verb exhibiting neither gemination nor an epenthetic vowel; galpon 'to cry' is a class-two verb.

Preterite-present verbs

The preterite-present verbs are a class of verbs which have a present tense in the form of a strong preterite and a past tense like the past of a weak verb. These verbs derive from the subjunctive or optative use of preterite forms to refer to present or future time. For example, witan, "to know" comes from a verb which originally meant "to have seen". The present singular is formed from the original singular preterite stem and the present plural from the original plural preterite stem. As a result of this history, the first-person singular and third-person singular are the same in the present.

Few preterite present appear in the Old Saxon corpus, and some are not attested in all forms.

[Forms above with asterisk (*) unattested]

Anomalous verbs

Additionally, there is a further group of five verbs which are anomalous:

• dōn (to do)
• gān (to go)
• stān (to stand)
• wesan/sīn (to be)
• willian (to want)

These five have their own conjugation schemes which differ significantly from all the other classes of verb. This is not especially unusual: "want", "do", "go", and "be" are the most commonly used verbs in the language, and are very important to the meaning of the sentences in which they are used. Idiosyncratic patterns of inflection are much more common with important items of vocabulary than with rarely used ones.

The verbs dōn 'to do', stān 'to stand' and gān 'to go' are conjugated alike; willian 'to want' is similar outside of the present tense.

The verb 'to be' is actually composed of three different stems:

The present forms of wesan are almost never used. Therefore, wesan is used as the past, imperative, and present participle versions of sīn, and does not have a separate meaning. The b-stem is only met in the present indicative of wesan, and only for the 1st and 2nd persons in the singular.

Strong nouns

Here are the strong a-stem declensional endings and examples for each gender:

For the '-u/–' neuter forms above, the '-u' is used with a root consisting of a single short syllable such as bak ('back'), skip ('ship') or fat ('vat'). The feminine nominative -a is due to analogy with the accusative.^[1]

Here are the strong ja-stem declensional endings and examples for each gender:

Here is the i-stem declension. We will be using examples to display mutations:

Here is the u-stem declension. We will be using examples to display mutations: